The Rain Forest

by Olivia Manning

  Hugh had told her she would have to return to England, so why not have the child there? – and keep it as her own? With the illuminating joy of discovery, she saw the child as a creature belonging only to her: her unique responsibility.

  Simon, reaching out to catch Hugh’s hands, said: ‘So there you are!’ as though a search had been concluded. When they sat down, he was grinning at what he had come to relate.

  ‘I got back yesterday,’ he said, ‘and you’ll scarcely believe what I found awaiting me: a communication. From whom do you think? No less a person than your august boss, Sir George Easterbrook. Let me read it to you.’ Simon opened a brief-case that was beside him in the chair, and took out an official letter. Gleefully, he handed it to Hugh. Reading it, Hugh was less than gleeful. It was a request that Dr Hobhouse’s pass to the Forest Area be returned for possible renewal.

  ‘Possible renewal!’ Simon gulped his laughter at the thought of it: ‘Once your chaps get their hands on it, I’ll never see it again.’

  ‘But if it’s not renewed, it will be invalid.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Most of the police have only the vaguest idea what they’re looking at. They have a smattering of English and can recognize an official stamp, but they couldn’t check the date on a pass. And no one’s greatly concerned to catch me: I’m not important enough. To tell you the truth, when the Land-Rover’s not loaded up, I can go cross-country; but, taking my camping stuff over, I thought it wiser to go by road. The thing could overturn on rough grass. But you haven’t seen all.’ Simon returned to the brief-case and brought out a written note. Hugh recognized Pedley’s handwriting. ‘This,’ Simon said, ‘was slipped into the envelope, probably unknown to Easterbrook. Still, I’ll take it as official.’

  Pedley’s note read: ‘You were a typical rat, Hobhouse, taking advantage of a new employee. I won’t talk to you about playing the game, you wouldn’t know what I meant. But if I see you around, I’ll tell you exactly what I think of you.’

  ‘Here is my reply.’

  Simon, rejoicing in his own composition, watched Hugh as he read: ‘Dear Sir George, It has long been my belief that the official mind is puerile, limited and vulgar. This belief has been confirmed by your assistant, Pedley, who states that I took advantage of a new employee. The officials on Al-Bustan are known to be the throw-outs of the Diplomatic Service. The fact that you, yourself, regarded a knighthood as fitting reward for fifteen years wasted in Jumblijah (better known as the ‘Arsehole of Asia’), tells me all I need to know of your moral values . . .’

  Leaning over Hugh, Simon ran a finger under this last sentence: ‘Particularly rich, don’t you think?’

  ‘You haven’t sent it, I hope?’

  ‘Certainly I’ve sent it. I dropped it into the office on my way down. Old George’s probably brooding on it now. I must say, I think he won’t much like it.’

  Making an effort to steady himself, Hugh read the letter through again and found it more alarming than he had at first. Why had this happened now, when freedom of action had been filched from him?

  ‘Don’t you think it’s rather harsh? Couldn’t you ring him tomorrow and say you meant it as a joke? The trouble is, my wife’s just told me she’s going to have a baby. I’ll have to find some sort of permanent job and I was meaning to approach Sir George and . . .’

  Simon threw back his head to laugh: ‘You can’t be serious. No intelligent person could settle into this fossilized service. These people are relics. They’re like those Japanese soldiers they found in the jungle, still fighting the war. They still think the empire exists. They still believe in the inalienable superiority of the British race. Do you want to become one of them? For, you would. In a few years you’d be as solidly stuck in here as a currant in a suet pudding. No, my dear fellow, don’t consider it. It’s bad enough living here as a private person. Nothing would induce me to stay if I were not doing my bit of research.’

  ‘On the Pterdophyta?’

  ‘Hah!’ Simon laughed again: ‘And not a bad subject, either. Ferns are among the oldest life-forms on this planet. And, what’s more, some of them could harbour another form, as ancient but much more deadly.’ He emptied his glass and refused Hugh’s offer of another drink. Surveying the people about him with tolerant contempt, he said: ‘Talking of life-forms: we have them here in brutish variety. There’s that old fool, Simpson. What does he look like? A monstrous flea. Puce is the word.’ Simon sat upright, animated by this new topic: ‘The flea! Yes, indeed! We could be due for another killer as all-pervasive as the plague.’

  ‘Where could it come from? Outer space?’

  ‘Who knows. It could be hibernating in some unexplored corner of the earth, some fragment of primitive forest, and carried by a creature so small, no one has noticed it.’

  ‘A new virus?’

  ‘Not necessarily a virus, but probably: a disease as contagious as smallpox, as virulent as plague, coming newly into a world without inherited immunity and no present knowledge. It would take time to isolate. Before being isolated, it could bring human numbers down at a very satisfactory speed.’

  Disturbed by the hard sapphire of Simon’s eye, the grin inside the black beard, Hugh said fretfully: ‘You’ve wrecked my chances with Sir George. The least you can do, is tell me what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Perhaps I will. But another time. I promise: when and if I have something to tell you, you’ll be the first to hear of it.’

  Mrs Axelrod and Mrs Prince, on their sofa, with their backs to Kristy, were keeping an eye on Simon Hobhouse. Mrs Axelrod said: ‘What do you think he’s doing here? He’s a doctor, you know. I wouldn’t be surprised . . .’ Before saying more, she took the precaution of glancing behind her. The sight of Kristy brought her to so abrupt a stop, Kristy felt a sense of triumph. Head high, she walked round the sofa to the staircase and took herself to bed.

  ‘How about strolling up the hill with me?’ Simon said. He and Hugh were about to get to their feet when Ambrose came towards them.

  Simon, ironically pleasant, said: ‘Why, Ambrose, happy to see you. You’ve been avoiding me.’

  Ambrose lifted his hand and struck Simon across the face. The blow sounded through the room and the guests were startled. Some of the men stood up to see what had occurred.

  Putting his hand to his cheek, Simon said: ‘Really, Ambrose! That was a bit rough.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’ Hugh asked but it was obvious that Ambrose, standing in front of them, rocking slightly on his heels, did not know why he had done it. His eyes were glazed as though he had just wakened from sleep while remarks like ‘Quite uncalled-for’ and ‘Disgusting behaviour’ were being directed at him by Ogden and others.

  The telephone rang in the office and he hurried to it, escaping his self-made predicament. Almost at once, he put the receiver down and called Hassan from the bar: ‘To the Harbour. Get a taxi. Halan. Asra.’

  Hassan took to his heels. Ambrose, standing just inside the salon, looked like a sleepwalker that had lost sense of direction. The guests, diverted by his strange appearance, watched him while Simon, getting no sympathy now, smiled ruefully, and rubbed his cheek.

  There was a long, silent pause before Hassan came back, breathless with anxiety, shouting: ‘Taxi, sayyid, taxi,’ and Ambrose, moving his arms as though against a hostile crowd, trotted out through the front door.

  3

  Mrs Gunner was dead before Ambrose reached the hospital. The matron, called from her bed, received him with the eager interest that she bestowed on other people’s misfortunes. His mother, she said, had had a second heart attack. She had rung her bell but was unconscious before the nurse could reach her.

  There were formalities that had to be got through with all possible speed. Moving close to Ambrose, the matron murmured: ‘The humidity, you know. Much worse than the heat.’ He stepped back from her, catching in her breath intimations of a more imminent decay.

  Dr Dixon had been called to sign the death
certificate. The funeral must follow without delay.

  Ambrose, taken up to the half-lit corridor of the women’s floor, was shown into his mother’s room. The matron, making the most of the importance conferred on her by such events, hung about until Ambrose indicated that he would like to be alone.

  Mrs Gunner lay under a sheet. When Ambrose uncovered her face, he saw she was smiling her old, mischievous smile. A coffin had already arrived from government stores. It stood upright, opposite Ambrose: a flimsy box without fittings, small like a child’s coffin.

  Hearing the orderlies whispering and shuffling outside the door, he tried to think of some suitable word of farewell. Constricted by the need for haste, he muttered crossly: ‘You mean old bitch, I loved you.’ He bent and kissed her brow, feeling it beneath his lips as cold and hard as a waxen apple. He thought he could have bitten into it and appalled and revolted by such an idea, he knew it would haunt him for weeks to come.

  He opened the door and found four down-at-heel Arabs waiting, two old women to lay out the body and two men to lift it. They looked at him, expectant, their eyes bright with sympathy, and as he left the room, they entered and closed the door.

  Dr Dixon was sitting at the table in the corridor, the death certificate in front of him. His heavy old face, inflamed by long devotion to the bottle, had settled into folds of grief. When he lifted his eyes, Ambrose saw they were full of tears.

  ‘Knew her for thirty years or more,’ said Dixon. ‘I’ll miss her. We’ll all miss her. She was a gallant girl.’ The matron, at his elbow, murmured agreement.

  Ambrose was touched but, at the same time, with preternatural clarity saw that the matron’s face-powder, hastily thrown on for the doctor’s visit, had drifted like snow in the runnels on each side of her nose.

  Her voice, more than usually lady-like, snivelled at him: ‘Sit down, please, Mr Gunner. Things won’t take long.’

  The doctor and matron went downstairs and Ambrose was left in the meaningless width of the corridor. The building was silent, held in the stillness of sleep. Ambrose, putting out antennæ of hearing, listened for any sound that might come from his mother’s room. He heard nothing. The doors to the balcony stood open and when he went out, he was met by the scent of the night-blooming cereus in the Residency garden. He sat on the day bed, that had been stripped of its cushions, and looked over the reaches of darkness, breathing in a sweetness too luscious for common life. His surroundings enhanced the strangeness of his situation.

  He remembered he had a hip-flask on him. With some prescience of this very night, he had filled it that morning with his mother’s best brandy. He put the flask to his lips, then gazed mournfully over the scene before him.

  The misted sky gave no light and there was no light in the Residency, but the great garden sparked with the movement of fire-flies. Beyond the lawn edge, there was refulgence: the Chief Secretary was entertaining. The sea, too, had a gloss, like the sheen on satin, for it was the season when phosphorescent animalcules drifted about in shoals.

  The scene distracted him from his present state. He closed his eyes, took another swig of brandy, and sought in himself some adequate emotion: sorrow, regret, a sense of loss. All he could feel was a desolate consciousness of his own loneliness in the world.

  What would become of him now? His mother had, often enough, let him know he would get none of her money. He had waited for months on Lomax without result. But Lomax and his mother were only the last of those who had failed him. Looking back over his wives, lovers and friends, he nailed each name with a word: tart, bitch, skivvy, serf, scrounger, creep, Judas, twister, pervert, vulgarian, ponce. What a crew! And yet, if he could return to them, he would. Al-Bustan might be paradise but the Fulham Road was home.

  He wondered if, perhaps, she had left him something after all. Some little thing: just enough to fly him back to England with a bit over so he could settle back into the routine of London life! A thousand would do it.

  Bemused by brandy, he could not understand why he had had to stay here so long, then it came back to him. He was what the law did not allow; a double bankrupt. But that was not the only hindrance to his return. If he reappeared in his old haunts, he would be let in for such a round of explanations, apologies, repayments of loans and settlement of debts, he would be beggared in a week. And money was only the half of it. His friends had turned against him. He brooded on his own tragedy. He had been thrown out of the autarkical literary half-world to which he, a man of genuine talents, had given distinction. There was ingratitude for you. All because he had sometimes knocked down the wrong person.

  Swallowing the brandy, suffering again the injustice done to him, his indignation was roused. He remembered those last days when, oversensitive to criticism, too honest of speech, he refused to be rejected by a bunch of sharks, duns, bums, catchpolls. . . . (He ran out of words.) If he were not invited to a party, he went uninvited. There had come a time when not only old friends but mere outsiders – inglorious ingrates, groundlings, mental paupers, intellectual scavengers – had had the effrontery to turn him out of some wretched bun-fight. In the end, he had even been ejected from a party at Putney. Putney!

  If he were forced out of the Daisy now, where on earth would he go? He had once thought of entering a monastery in some warm, wine-drinking country. He thought of it now. He had seen Franciscans begging around the cafés in Florence and thought they had an easy time of it. Comforted by this solution of his plight, he finished the brandy.

  When a nurse came for him, he went down to the hall and demanded to see the matron. She appeared, all sympathy, and found him in a state of lofty belligerency.

  He said: ‘I must get in touch, at once, with Father Matthew at the Mission. My mother was of the True Faith and he must be informed of her demise.’

  The matron, a church-goer, stared at him in astonishment: ‘You must be mistaken, Mr Gunner. Your mother was a regular communicant at St George’s.’

  ‘She was merely being tactful. We Gunners are an old Catholic family. I must ask you to let me use the telephone. It is essential I contact Father Matthew.’

  ‘It’s late. It’s after midnight.’ Displeased, the matron put him into the porter’s lodge and left him alone to search through the greasy telephone directory.

  The Mission telephone rang a long time before a high, frightened female voice answered him. He shouted: ‘Bring Father Matthew to the phone. It’s a matter of great urgency.’

  ‘That not possible. Father Matthew fast asleep. He got early mass in morning.’

  ‘Wake him at once. His help is needed. Tell him it’s a soul in torment.’

  There was a protracted silence then the woman – ‘Bloody Christian Arab,’ Ambrose said in an audible murmur – replied ‘All right. I go.’ He heard her shuffling away. After another interval Father Matthew, as nervous as his housekeeper, was brought to the telephone.

  ‘You’re not one of my flock, are you?’ he asked.

  Exasperated by these quibbling delays, Ambrose said: ‘No, but I’ve decided to embrace Catholicism. I wish to make a full confession and a firm purpose of amendment.’

  ‘Oh!’ Father Matthew seemed very relieved: ‘There’s no hurry for that. Come up tomorrow morning and we’ll have a chat about it.’

  ‘You are to come here now. I demand it. There was a time when we Gunners had our private chaplain who could be called on at any hour of the day or night.’

  Father Matthew made no comment. Ambrose shouted: ‘Are you listening, you old hypocrite?’ His question was met by silence. He threw back the receiver and dialled the Mission again. He got the engaged signal.

  The Reverend Pierce entered the hospital door, come to claim his own.

  The matron, looking in on Ambrose, said sternly: ‘Mr Gunner, they’re waiting to screw the lid down.’

  The coffin was on a table in the hall. Ambrose gave up the Mission and went to see the last of his mother. She was dressed in the sequinned trousers and jerkin which she had
been wearing when she was brought into the hospital. Her little, brown withered hands were crossed on her breast, her little red shoes pointed upwards. The smile had gone somewhat awry. Ambrose, sobered, noted the change in her and knew there was no time to lose.

  Only two orderlies were needed to carry the coffin to the graveyard. The porter, holding a paraffin flare, led the procession and Ambrose and the Reverend Pierce walked behind, the matron and two nurses bringing up the rear. Dr Dixon, despite his tears, had excused himself and gone home to bed.

  Ambrose did not like Pierce, chiefly because the clergyman carried about him the reek of a foul tobacco pipe, and felt offended that he had to tolerate the company of this man on so solemn an occasion.

  As soon as the procession entered the damp, leaf-crowded atmosphere of the cemetery, it was assailed by insects of every sort. Driven mad by the brilliant, streaming flambeau, they dived through the flame and, sizzling, struck the light-reflecting faces of the mourners then, half-incinerated, fell to the ground. As the procession went slowly through a stench of burnt insects, Ambrose thought it as well that Kristy was not here to suffer with them. Nocturnal animals, alarmed by the invasion, screeched, chattered and hooted among the trees. They had some difficulty getting the coffin round the sausage tree which had grown enormously since Ambrose had seen it first thirty years ago. All the way, the girls who had nursed Mrs Gunner, an Arab and a negress, sobbed and wailed, putting Ambrose to shame.

  The light touched ancient gravestones throttled by weeds. There were few new graves. These days people were not snuffed out as they used to be. When threatened by some mortal condition, they usually had time to fly home for treatment.

  Half-way down the path, there was a roundpoint with an obelisk commemorating the officers and men of the brigantine Hester Gracey that, in 1765, had put into Al-Bustan harbour flying the yellow jack. No one would go near the ship but when it was assumed that all on board were dead, the harbour officials, mouths and nostrils covered, rowed out and fired it.